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Nigeria’s National Assembly has no
functional budget office that provides the liaison between the
legislature and the executive on budget matters. This was revealed to
participants at a policy meeting at the weekend.

Chairman, House of Representatives
Committee on Finance, John Enoh, said though work had actually
commenced on the building project a few years ago, it was abandoned
shortly after following disagreements between the Presidency and
National Assembly management over issues he did not elaborate.

“There is no Budget office in the
National Assembly at present, like the Congressional Budget office.
But, a lot of work has actually gone on in the National Assembly. For
some years now, we have been working on the National Assembly Budget
office. At some point, it had actually gone for Presidential assent,
but there were some little bit of disagreements here and there with the
National Assembly management,” Mr Enoh said in an answer to a question
at the seminar.

Though the House of
Representatives has a Committee on Legislative Budget, the lawmaker
assured that the office would be fully functional during the next
National Assembly, considering its usefulness to the lawmakers in their
legislative functions.

“Unless that is done, we will keep depending almost entirely on what is given by the executive,” he said.

The office is the equivalent of
the United States Congressional Budget office established in the
Congress to engage with the budget office to provide independent
information for the legislature on the budget, before annual estimates
are presented.

Mr Enoh who was speaking on some
of the challenges that create distortion in the country’s budget
process noted that despite the existence of Fiscal Responsibility Act
(FRA) since 2007, the implementation of most of its provisions has
always been in the breach.

“The budget process is a challenge
that everybody must appreciate. For instance, there are listed agencies
and corporations of government, like the NNPC (Nigerian National
Petroleum Corporation), NPA (Nigerian Ports Authority), CBN (Central
Bank of Nigeria), and so on, that the law says that when the estimates
for next year’s budget are to be led before the National Assembly, they
must accompany, so that they will be able to capture in totality what
the real figures are and not just Federal Government expenditure. I do
not think this is the case in practice,” he pointed out.

Besides, he said the country’s
budget has continued to be a problem in almost 12 years of our
democracy, either in terms of controversy about who owns the budget
process between the Executive and the legislature, or in the timing of
presentation, stressing the importance of engagement of the National
Assembly by the Executive in the process of preparing the budget to
avoid discrepancies.

Time constraint

According to him, the timing of
the budget presentation must be reviewed to give the lawmakers
sufficient time to look at the estimates presented by the executive
before passing it into law.

“The Fiscal Responsibility Act
requires that the Medium term expenditure framework (MTEF) must be
submitted to the National Assembly not later than three months to the
end of a particular year. That has not been achieved yet. The House of
Representatives passed it (the MTEF) only yesterday (Wednesday). If
that is to be led before the House by next week Tuesday, how much of
that is going to benefit from the MTEF?” He wondered.

“We must get these things right.
The National Assembly needs to have as much time as it can to work on
the budget. If in a particular year, the budget is before the NASS in
September as required by law, members would have enough time to look at
all issues before passing the appropriation law.

“The Budget office, Ministry of
Finance and all those involved in the budget process need a lot more
engagement to get the National Assembly to appreciate what damage they
could be causing the budget if the rules are not followed,” he
explained.

Budget indiscipline

Executive Director, Centre for the
Study of the Economies of Africa (CSEA), Menachem Katz, said though the
Federal Government made progress in strengthening public financial
management since 2003, there has been limited improvement in service
delivery, resulting in increased budget indiscipline.

According to Mr. Katz, the
country’s budgets in recent years have become increasingly
expansionary, accounting for deficits of about 10 percent of the gross
domestic product (GDP) as well as increased spending and depletion of
the excess crude account.

On the timing of the budget
process, he said major delays have been experienced in the approval,
pointing out that there is need for the current budget calendar to be
replaced with an alternative cycle that would provide sufficient time
for in-depth discussion of government fiscal strategy and policy
priorities.